TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

Software Release 6.1.1

August 2014

Two-Second Advantage

2
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TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

Contents
Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
TIBCO Documentation and Support Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Key Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Layout of the Concepts Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

General Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Application Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Shared Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Process Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Palettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Shared Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Mapping Concepts to a Sample: File Poller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

Additional General Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Conversations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Fault Handlers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Event Handlers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Component Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Component References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
SOAP Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
REST Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Mapping Concepts to a Sample: Mortgage Broker Service and Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Mapping Concepts to a Sample: Managing Books for a Bookstore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Design-time Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Runtime Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Administration Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Application Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
AppSpaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

4
AppNodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
bwagent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

Figures
Elements of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Structure of an Application Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Relationship Between Application Modules and Shared Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
File Poller Process Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Relationship Between Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Loan Application Provider Sample Using Conversations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Sample Fault Handlers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
TIBCO Business Studio Workbench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Application Node Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
File System Manifestation of a Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
File System Manifestation of an AppSpace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
File System Manifestation of an AppNode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

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Concepts

Installation

Getting Started

Application Development

Administration

Bindings and Palettes Reference

Samples

Error Codes

Migration

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TIBCO Enterprise Administrator User's Guide

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TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

Overview
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks is an integration product suite for enterprise, web, and mobile
applications.
The software allows you to create services and integrate applications using a visual, model-driven
development environment, and then deploy them in the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks runtime.

It uses the Eclipse graphical user interface (GUI) provided by TIBCO Business Studio to define
business processes and generate deployable artifacts in the form of archive files. The deployable
artifacts can be deployed and run in the product runtime, and managed using an administration
interface such as TIBCO Enterprise Administrator.
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks addresses business problems of varying complexity using the following
integration styles:

Batch-oriented - provides non real-time integration for endpoints such as databases or files, and
uses records for data abstraction.

Process-oriented - provides real-time integration for endpoints such as application APIs and
adapters, and uses APIs, objects, and messages for data abstraction.

Service-oriented - provides real-time integration for endpoints such as web services and APIs, and
uses services and messages for data abstraction.

Resource-oriented - provides real-time integration for endpoints such as mobile or web applications
and APIs, and uses resources for data abstraction.

Key Concepts
The concepts map provides an overview of the key concepts that you may encounter when working
with the product. Some of these concepts are applicable to design perspective or runtime and
administration perspective alone, while some are applicable to both perspectives.
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks consists of a design-time where you can develop applications that
implement business logic, the runtime where you execute the applications, and the administration
component where you deploy and manage applications in the runtime. The ActiveMatrix
BusinessWorks runtime is an ecosystem of entities that can be co-located or distributed. The bwadmin
utility and TIBCO Enterprise Administrator allow you to deploy, monitor and manage the applications.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks is based on open architecture, flexibility, modularity, and support for
standards.
Flexibility
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks is designed to make adding, upgrading, and swapping of business
components easy.
Flexible architecture is demonstrated through:

A zero coding model that allows the users to select and drop activities onto the Process Editor and
configure the activities in the UI.

Ability to build tightly coupled as well as loosely coupled services.

Ability to build strongly typed as well as loosely typed service implementations.

Ability to specify application configuration to be either hard-coded or late-bound.

Ability to manage the process state that is maintained across invocations either by the runtime
container (process engine) or by the process implementation.

Encapsulation of configuration data, thus minimizing the configuration properties exposed by the
application.

Openness and Extensibility

Openness and extensibility features include:

Public APIs which allow you to develop custom activities and XPath functions.

Integration with standard Java classes and OSGi Java services to supplement the process or model
driven approach.

Extensible Eclipse-based design-time.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

Extensible OSGi based runtime.

Extensible TIBCO Enterprise Administration based administration framework.

Modularity
Modularity of the product supports:

Large teams and distributed development through modular constructs.

Increased visibility and traceability metadata, such as Name, Version, Exported Functionality, and
Dependencies.

Reusability with a consistent model across different technologies: Processes, Java Classes, XSDs,
WSDLs, and shared resources.

Standards-based
Supported standards include:

Protocols/API: SOAP, JSON/REST, WSDL, HTTP, HTTPS, JMS, JDBC

Data representation and transformation: Native support for XML, XSD, XPath, JSON, XSLT

TIBCO: TIBCO Rendezvous, TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS), TIBCO AE Schema

Others: FTP, JNDI, SMTP, TCP

Layout of the Concepts Guide

The Concepts Guide presents the design-time, runtime, and administration concepts that are useful to
developers and administrators. These concepts are described in one of more of the following sections:

General Concepts: Explains the essential concepts such as applications, application modules,
shared modules, processes, activities, transitions, and shared resources.

Additional General Concepts: Explains additional concepts that can be used when developing
applications such as groups, properties, services, components, and event handlers.

Design-time Concepts: Introduces the design-time environment TIBCO Business Studio.

Runtime Concepts: Explains the runtime concepts such as AppNodes, process instances, and jobs.

Administrative Concepts: Explains the administration concepts such as domains, AppSpaces, and
AppNodes, that are useful to run and monitor the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications.

Sections that map concepts to bundled samples are included after introducing the key concepts
required to implement solutions using the different integration styles. These sections aim to enhance
your understanding of the concepts by mapping them to ready samples that can be viewed and
executed.

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10

General Concepts
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications developed to solve business problems can range from simple
to very complex solutions. These applications are packaged in deployable artifacts in the form of
archive files. An application typically contains one application module, which consists of one or more
processes, and zero or more shared modules. Understanding the general concepts is essential to both
developers and administrators.

Applications
An application is a collection of one or more modules and can be executed in the runtime. Applications
are developed using TIBCO Business Studio.
Applications are developed using many features available in the product and can range from simple to
very complex ones. An ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks application contains one application module
(Application Modules), which in turn consists of one or more processes that define the business logic,
and zero or more shared modules (Shared Modules). A process that is responsible for initiating the
business logic at runtime is used to implement a component in an application module.
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications can also contain OSGi bundles that do not contain
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks artifacts. For example, you can create an application that contains a Java
OSGi bundle, which is also referred to as a Java module.
The term module is used interchangeably with OSGi bundle.
Elements of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Applications

Once an application is developed, you can either run or debug directly in TIBCO Business Studio, or
generate a deployable artifact (an archive file) that can be deployed later in the runtime environment.
The deployment artifact is the only artifact that is handed over from the design-time to the runtime
environment.

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11

Modules
A module is an Eclipse project that is configured for ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks.
Two types of modules are supported:

Application modules: The smallest unit of resources that is named, versioned, and packaged as part
of an application and is executed in the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks runtime. An application
module cannot be deployed by itself in the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks runtime; it must be
packaged as part of an application.

Shared modules: The smallest unit of resources that is named, versioned, and packaged as part of an
application and can be used by other modules that are part of the same application. A shared
module cannot be deployed by itself; it must be included as part of an application module.

Application Modules
The smallest unit of resources that is named, versioned, and packaged as part of an application and is
executed in the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks runtime.
An application module typically contains one or more ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks processes. An
application module is configured and represented in TIBCO Business Studio, and can be used by
multiple applications. Each application module contains metadata that is associated with it, such as
name, version, dependencies and so on.
An application module can include the following resources:

Processes: Processes capture and represent the flow of business information between different data
sources and destinations. Processes are contained within a process package. An application module
can contain one or more process packages, and each of the process packages can contain one or
more processes.

Service descriptors: Service descriptors consist of WSDL files that provide the service's name,
interface, list of operations offered by the service, the parameters expected by the operations, and
the return types.

Resources: Resources are reusable configuration data that can be shared within an application. For
example, Shared Resources.

Schemas: Schemas define elements and attributes which can be used to define structured data.

Components: The main process that is responsible for initiating the execution of the application
logic is represented by a component. When the application logic is spread across multiple processes,
there can be one or more components in the application module.

Module Descriptors: Module descriptors provide information about the application module such as
module overview, configuration properties, dependencies, components, and shared variables.
The component section in the Module Descriptor allows you to configure the components for this
specific application module.

src: Default source directory created when the project is Java enabled. A project can contain multiple
source directories which are used to contain the Java classes and packages.

JRE System Library: If your project is Java enabled, TIBCO Business Studio includes the required
JAR files in this folder.

Application modules can depend on shared modules, which can contain processes, schemas, and
WSDL files that can be used by a process in the application module.
The application modules cannot export their functionality to other modules.

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Structure of an Application Module

Shared Modules
The smallest unit of resources that is named, versioned and packaged as part of an application and can
be used by other modules that are part of the same application.
Shared modules export their functionality (processes, shared resources, and schema namespaces) to
application modules or to other shared modules. This means that other modules in the system may
depend on a shared module for this information.
Relationship Between Application Modules and Shared Modules

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13
Shared modules can depend only on other shared modules and cannot depend on application modules.
At a module level, a process can reference another process in a different module.

A process can also reference a WSDL or a schema defined in a different shared module. Schemas that
are intended to be exported from a shared module must be contained in the Schemas special folder.

Two modules with the same namespace cannot be used in the same application.

Processes
Processes capture and describe the flow of business information in an enterprise between different data
sources and destinations.
Processes are comprised of activities that accomplish tasks. The flow of data between activities in a
process is represented using transitions, conditions, and mappings. TIBCO Business Studio provides
design palettes containing activities and transitions that can be used to develop business processes.
Parent Process
A process can call another process. The calling process is referred to as a caller process or a parent
process.
Subprocesses
A process can be also called by another process. The called process is referred to as a subprocess or a
child process. A parent process can call the subprocesses into two ways: in-line and non in-line. At
runtime, in-line subprocesses are executed on the same engine thread as the caller process while the non
in-line subprocesses spawn new engine threads and are executed on the new threads.
Component Process
The execution of a process is triggered by various events. Often the business logic that is designed to
react to a particular event is spread across multiple processes. One of the processes is special and it
reacts to the original event and triggers the execution of the other processes. This special process is
referred to as the component process or main process. A component process is responsible for initiating
the job at run time.
A component process is designed to react to various events and these events are triggered by Process
Starters and Signal-Ins.
Stateful Process

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14
A process that relies on the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine to maintain its state across
invocations is called a stateful process. As the engine maintains its state, a stateful process does not
require an external persistence store.

Stateless Process
A process that does not require the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine to maintain its state across
invocations is called a stateless process. If needed, a developer can design a stateless process to
manually maintain the process state by using an external persistence store.

Process Services
A process can provide services to other processes. A process service exposes the operations provided
by the process and is implemented using a WSDL. When the process is implemented by a component,
the process services are exposed as component services, which then need to be configured using
bindings.
Process References
A process can consume services provided by other processes or by external service providers. A
process reference exposes the operations consumed by the process and is implemented using a WSDL.
A process reference can be configured to invoke a process or a external service.
When the process is implemented by a component, the process references that are not configured to
call a process or an external service through a binding are exposed as component references, which
then need to be configured using bindings.

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A simple business process can be developed by adding activities in sequence, and then connecting the
activities using transitions with or without conditions. Developing a complex business process typically
involves developing a component process and one or more subprocesses. Use of subprocesses makes
the complex business process easier to understand and debug. At runtime, in-line subprocesses do not
create a new job, but are executed on the job created by their calling process.
See Design-time Concepts for details about the TIBCO Business Studio development environment.

Process Packages
Process packages are groups of related processes.
Process packages are similar to Java packages in their semantics and in the way they are represented in
the file system.
Visibility of the processes outside of the package depends on whether the processes are declared as
public or private:

Private processes can be invoked only by processes that are part of the same package.

Public processes can be invoked by processes that are defined either inside or outside the package.

Activities
Activities are the individual units of work in a process.
Activities generally interact with an external system and perform a task. Activities that perform similar
tasks are grouped in an entity called a palette. TIBCO Business Studio provides various technology
specific palettes that allows you to build a business process.
Each activity in a palette is represented by an icon. For example, the database update activity is
. Often an activity icon is also decorated with an additional symbol such as
represented by the icon
a green or a yellow pause sign to indicate the activity waits for an event, an arrow to indicate the
direction of the data flow, and so on. For example, the arrow sign in the JMS Send Message icon
(

) indicates data is being sent by this activity.

Detailed descriptions of palettes are available in the Bindings and Palettes Reference guide.
Activities can be classified into three types:

Regular Activities perform a specific task. Regular activities can have input and output in addition
to their configuration. Furthermore, activities can also state the faults they can throw at runtime and
this allows the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks process to be designed to handle these faults and
perform the necessary actions. Regular activities can be further classified into synchronous and
asynchronous activities.
Synchronous activities are blocking and they block the execution of the process until the activity task is
complete. Signal-in activities are always blocking.
Asynchronous activities are non-blocking and they perform a task asynchronously without blocking
the execution of a process.

Process Starter Activities are configured to react to events and trigger the execution of a process
when the event occurs. Process starter activities can have only outputs in addition to their
configuration. For example, the HTTP Receive process starter activity starts a process when an
HTTP request is received.

Signal-in Activities wait for an asynchronous event in a process and then proceed with executing
the process instance when an appropriate event is received. Signal-in activities require
conversations to be configured. See Conversations for details.

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See Design-time Concepts for details about the TIBCO Business Studio development environment.

Palettes
Palettes group activities that perform similar tasks. TIBCO Business Studio provides various
technology specific palettes that provide quick access to activities when building a process.
Palettes are typically located to the right of the Process Editor in TIBCO Business Studio. Depending on
the process being designed and the stage of process development, you can focus on the activities
available under appropriate palettes.
In TIBCO Business Studio, the Palettes view displays the list of activities contained in a palette and
allows you to perform the following actions:

Search for activities in palettes.

Use multiple palettes and save them as grouped palette sets.

Save palettes, or the grouped palette sets, as favorites.

View recently used palettes.

Create virtual palettes, which means that some activities can be taken from unrelated palettes. This
activity is called a custom shortcut.

See Design-time Concepts for details about the TIBCO Business Studio development environment.

Transitions
Transitions are used to connect two activities to represent the flow of process execution from one
activity to another.
Transitions are represented by an arrow between two activities. The arrows are unidirectional and you
cannot draw a transition to a previously executed activity; control flow in a process must proceed
sequentially, beginning with the starting activity and ending with the last activity in the process.
You can draw transitions from one activity to many other activities. For example, if the shipping
schedule indicates a delay in shipping an order, you want to notify the customer and enter the
information into the customer service system. However, if there is no delay, you want to enter the
information into the customer service system (without notifying the customer).
Transitions can be classified into transitions without conditions, transitions with conditions, and
transitions with errors.

Transitions Without Conditions: Control flows from one activity to the next automatically, without
any conditions.

Transitions With Conditions: When an activity completes processing, conditions specified on the
transitions originating from that activity are evaluated to determine whether the transition to the
next activity should be taken or not. All transitions whose conditions are met will be taken.

Error Transitions: Special transitions that specify the activities to execute in case of an error. When
configuring an activity, you can specify one transition out of the activity that is to be taken in case of
an error, and the activities to be executed following the error transition.

See Design-time Concepts for details about the TIBCO Business Studio development environment.

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Shared Resources
Shared resources are used to define a resource that contains common configuration data that can be
referenced from multiple places.
You can define a shared resource and then reference it from multiple activities in the same or different
process. For example, you can define a JDBC Connection resource and then use it in any of the JDBC
activities in your process to connect to the database.
Shared resources such as JDBC Connection, JMS Connection, HTTP Connection, and so on are available
at design-time. At runtime, the referencing activities and event sources have full access to their
instances and configuration.
Shared resources can be grouped in packages, similar to the way process packages and Java packages
are presented in the file system.
When defined in an application module, shared resources are not visible outside the application
module. However, when defined in a shared module, they are visible outside the shared module.
Shared Variables
Shared variables are used to define data for modules and jobs. There are two types of shared variables:
job shared variables and module shared variables and they are stored separately.
Job Shared Variables
Job shared variables are used to share data within a job such as between a parent and child process
instance. At runtime, the engine allocates a new variable for each job and the value of that variable is
not visible outside the job it was allocated to.
Module Shared Variables
Module shared variables are used to share data across all processes in a module. The module shared
variable is visible to all process instances within the same module.
The key difference between a job and a module shared variable is that when jobs expand across module
boundaries, a job shared variable is visible outside the module it was set in, while the module shared
variable is visible only inside one module.

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Mapping Concepts to a Sample: File Poller

The concepts introduced in sections Application Concepts and Basic Developer Concepts enable you to
understand and design a simple business process such as the File Poller example.
Pre-requisites
The File Poller sample demonstrates the concepts introduced in section General Concepts:

Applications

Application Modules

Shared Modules

Processes

Activities

Transitions

Shared Resources

After going through these sections, you should be able to understand and execute a simple process
such as the File Poller.
File Poller Sample
The File Poller sample project creates a simple process that polls a file at a given location (for example,
c:\tmp\fileread.txt) to periodically check if the file was changed and writes the content of the
polled file to a specified output file. By default, the file is created if it does not exist in the specified
location.
The activities, File Poller and Write File, from the File palette are used in this process. The data flows
from File Poller activity to the Write File activity and is illustrated by the transition (arrow) in File
Poller Process Diagram.
File Poller Process Diagram

See the Getting Started guide for step-by-step instructions to create and test the File Poller process.
The Project Explorer in the File Poller Process Diagram also shows the application application module - FilePoller, and the process - Process.bwp created
when developing the File Poller sample.
FilePoller.application,

Next Steps
After completing this section, you should be able to design a simple process with minimal assistance.
You can further build on this sample to solve problems using batch-oriented and process-oriented
styles by making use of BusinessWorks Adapters and activities from other palettes such as JMS, JDBC,
FTP.

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19

Additional General Concepts

This section introduces additional concepts that help build complex business processes.

Groups
Groups consist of one or more activities that are assembled together and executed according to their
type.
Groups enable you to put one or more activities together and configure the group as needed. For
example, defining a single error condition for the group, or creating a group as a transaction that
commits to a database only when all the activities in the group are completed.
Every group contains a GroupStart

element on the left and a GroupEnd

element on the right.

Groups can be classified into two categories: groups with conditions (repetitive groups) and groups
without conditions (non-repetitive groups).
Groups Without Conditions (Non-repetitive)
The following types of groups do not require any conditions to be defined for their execution:

: A scope is a simple group that has no custom behavior. It can define local variables and
Scope
can also contain fault handlers and event handlers. A scope with a single activity can be defined if
you need to handle faults or catch exceptions specific to an individual activity.

Critical Section
: Critical Section groups are used to synchronize jobs so that only one job is
acting on the group of activities at any given time. Any concurrently running job that contains a
corresponding critical section waits until the job currently executing the critical section completes.
Critical section groups are useful to control concurrent access to shared variables. While a critical
section group can be used to synchronize jobs within a process, module shared variables help
synchronize jobs for multiple processes.

: Local Transaction group provides for activities such as database updates. It

Local Transaction
performs auto commit on a local transaction at the end of the group, making the use of transactional
activities easier for users.

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Groups With Conditions (Repetitive)

Loops are groups with conditions which follow a pattern at runtime: initialize the loop, update the loop
at each iteration, and test conditions for the loop to stop iterating. The following types of loops are
available:

For Each
: For Each is used to loop for a specific number of iterations with a counter ranging
from a start value to an end value.

Iterate
: This loop has a simple index variable that can be used to count each iteration and the
loop executes for the number of iterations specified.

Repeat
: This loop has a simple index variable that can be used to count each iteration and has a
conditional expression to determine when to stop. The loop executes at least once and a test for the
specified condition is performed at the end of the loop. The Repeat loop continues to execute until
the condition evaluates to true.

Repeat on Error
: This loop involves a retry mechanism: if any activity in the loop throws a
fault, the condition expression is evaluated to determine if the loop should be repeated. An index
allows the condition to be based on the number of previous attempts, but any condition expression
may be used.

While
: This loop has a simple index variable that can be used to count each iteration and has a
conditional expression to determine when to stop. The condition for the While loop is tested at the
beginning of each iteration and the loop may never be executed if the condition is initially false: it
continues to execute as long as the condition holds true, and stops when the condition becomes
false.

See Design-time Concepts for details about the TIBCO Business Studio development environment.

Properties
Properties are used to define configuration. Depending on where and how they are defined and
qualified, properties can be classified into application properties, module properties, process
properties, and activity configuration properties.
Properties defined in the inner layer can reference a property defined at the parent layer. For example,
a process property can reference a module property instead of providing a literal value. Private
properties are not visible to the encapsulating layers.
The following diagram illustrates the relationship between the different types of properties:

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21
Relationship Between Properties

Features of Process, Module, and Application Properties

Process Properties

Module Properties

Application Properties

Scope/Visibility

Values

Visible within a
process.

Literal, module
property reference, or
a shared resource
reference.

Visible within the

module.

Literal or a shared
resource reference.

Not visible or
changeable from
TIBCO Enterprise
Administrator.

Any value for a

private module
property defined in
the profile is
ignored.

Displays all the

module properties
in the application.
These properties
are visible in
TIBCO Enterprise
Administrator.

Literal.

Profiles can be
used to specify a
new set of values
for the same
application.

Additional
Information
None.

Cannot be assigned to
an activity directly.
You need to reference
a module property
from a process
property, and then
reference the process
property from the
activity.
Overrides module
properties, thus
enabling you to use
different values for the
same module.

Cannot add new

properties at
application level.

See Design-time Concepts for details about the TIBCO Business Studio development environment.

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Conversations
Conversations represent two or more related message exchanges in the same process which are
correlated by the engine. For example, a conversation between a process and its clients, or between a
process and its back-end service.
Conversations are used for stateful processes, which can consist of one or more operations. In a stateful
process, the engine manages the state and helps correlate messages with the process; you need not
correlate the state of the operations. In a stateless process, the state is managed by the job itself.
A conversation is defined within the scope of a process. Conversations are always initiated by one
activity and joined by other activities. The activity that initiates a conversation generates a conversation
ID. The activities that join this conversation use the generated conversation ID when exchanging
messages.
Loan Application Provider Sample Using Conversations

When designing an application, better support for conversations can be achieved by defining the
following:

Number of conversations that a process participates in.

Definition of the activities that are part of the same conversation.

Sequence of messages for each conversation.

Fault Handlers
Errors (or faults) can occur when executing a process. Fault handlers allow you to catch faults or
exceptions and create fault-handling procedures to deal with potential runtime errors in your process
definitions.
Fault handlers are the recommended way to catch faults or exceptions in a process. Two types of fault
handlers are available: Catch Specific Fault and Catch All Faults.
Fault handlers are defined at the scope level, allowing you to catch faults or exceptions thrown by
activities within a scope. To catch faults or exceptions specific to an individual activity, you need to
define a new scope for that individual activity and attach a fault handler to the new scope.
At runtime, once a fault handler is executed, the associated scope will not complete due to the error
thrown. If a fault is not thrown in the fault handler, the process execution continues with the first
activity that follows the scope. If a fault is thrown in the fault handler, then the engine looks for an
enclosing scope that is designed to handle the fault. If one is found, the engine executes it. Once the
enclosing fault handler finishes its execution, the engine executes the next activity following the scope.
If no fault handlers are found in the enclosing scopes, then the job terminates with a fault.

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Consider the fault handlers defined in the sample process.
Sample Fault Handlers

If an exception is caught in the inner scope, the exception is logged to a file and the scope is completed.
The process execution then continues to the WriteFile activity, which is the next activity in the process.
If an exception is caught in the outer scope, the exception is logged and the scope is completed. The
process execution completes successfully as there are no following activities to be processed. An Exit
activity inside the fault handler will return the control out of the scope and the process.
Error Transitions can also be used to handle error conditions by using them to specify transition to take
in case of an error. See Error Transitions for details.

Event Handlers
Event handlers are used to overcome issues with interruptive and blocking activities.
Blocking activities contain a job that has to wait until a certain activity is executed. When using
blocking activities, all events have to be handled in the order the process was designed. However, it is
not possible to design a process without knowing when a message will be received. The
implementation of a shopping cart is a good example of a process where adding and removing items is
done in a random order by the shopper.
Event handlers are always attached to a scope and executed in parallel with the process so that they are
associated with an operation that is a part of the process. Each event handler is associated with one
process and has access to that process. However, it can be repeated multiple times during the process
execution.
Event handlers can be defined on two different levels:

Process level - When defined on the process level, it cancels the job.

Scope level - When defined on the scope level, it typically cancels the scope. Instead it can be
configured to timeout.

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Components
Components implement a process and provide information to the runtime on how to instantiate the
process.
Components are generated only for main processes and each main process initialized by the engine
must have a component associated with it. Components are required only by main processes that are
responsible to initiate the business logic. Subprocesses do not require components as they are called by
another parent process.

Component Services
Component services describe the binding information to receive an invocation from an external
consumer.
When a component implements a process that has a service, then that process service is exposed as a
component service. The component service then needs to be configured using bindings such as SOAP.
The service-centric architecture in TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks supports self-contained
services. Each service is configured separately and can be deployed on a different machine. If one
machine goes down, all other parts of the process can still run. This loosely-coupled architecture makes
it easy to change individual components as needed.

Component References
Component references describe the binding information required to invoke an external service.
When the component implements a process that has a reference, then the process reference is exposed
as a component reference. When configuring to invoke an external service, the binding information that
contains protocol details is not part of the process. The service consumer needs to create a component
that is an implementation of that process and then configure the binding along with protocol details.
The Invoke Operation activity or a reference can be used to invoke a service.
References have the following characteristics:

They can be public or private; public references are visible from outside of the process.

They always reference one interface or port type.

Based on the availability of the target service name at design-time, you can use either static references
or dynamic references. Static references can be used when the target service name is available at designtime and dynamic references are available when the target service name is not available at design-time.
This applies to target services developed as a part of ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks as well as external
target services.

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Services
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks can function both as a server and a client in a web services interaction.
Services and references are defined at the process level while the bindings are created at the component
level.
The supported service classes are:

REST (Representational State Transfer)-compliant services, where the primary purpose of the
service is to manipulate XML representations of web resources using a uniform set of stateless
operations. When using a stateless operation, the state is managed by the job itself instead of by the
engine.

SOAP services, which are used for exchanging information in the implementation of web services
relying on XML message format sent over HTTP and JMS.

Web services are typically associated with the following characteristics:

Interfaces that describe the operations available within a service. The interface is analogous to a
port type in a WSDL file. Each interface can contain multiple operations.

Operations define an action that can be performed by the service and the way the message is
encoded.

Transport used for communication such as HTTP or JMS.

Schema used for message exchanges such as XSD.

Operations
Operations define the action that can be performed by the process. Multiple operations are supported
in a process with multiple inputs, outputs, and faults.
There are two types of message exchange operations: one-way operations and request-response
operations.

SOAP Services
SOAP services are web services that use SOAP as the standard communication protocol for XML-based
message exchanges.
The standard HTTP protocol makes it easier for SOAP model to tunnel across firewalls and proxies
without any modifications to the SOAP protocol.

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) contains and describes the common set of rules to
define the messages, bindings, operations and location of the Web service. A WSDL file is a sort of
formal contract to define the interface that the Web service offers.

SOAP services require less coding than when designing REST services. For example, transactions,
security, coordination, addressing, and trust are defined by the WSDL specification. Most realworld applications are not simple and support complex operations, which require conversational
state and contextual information to be maintained. Application developers do not need to worry
about writing this code into the application layer themselves.

SOAP supports several technologies, including WSDL and XSD.

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REST Services
Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style of the World Wide Web that is used in
building services for distributed systems and networked applications. RESTful APIs are increasingly
preferred for enterprise, web and mobile integration use cases.
The key abstraction of information in REST is a resource, with focus on the roles of components, the
constraints upon their interaction with other components, and their interpretation of significant data
elements. REST ignores the details of component implementation and protocol syntax.
The key features of REST architectural style supported are:

Client-server architecture: Provides a separation of concerns and implementation details between

clients and servers.

Stateless communication: Ensures that each request contains all of the information required to
understand it independent of any stored context on the server.

Cacheability: Provides an option to the client to cache response data and reuse it later for
equivalent requests; thus partially eliminating some client-server interactions. This results in
improved scalability and performance.

ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks currently allows the following HTTP operations to be performed on

resources: GET, PUT, DELETE, and POST. Both XML and JSON are supported as data serialization
formats along with support for definition of custom status codes, key-value parameters, and query
parameters.

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Mapping Concepts to a Sample: Mortgage Broker Service

and Client
The concepts introduced in sections General Concepts, Groups, Conversations, and Services together
enable you to understand and design a service-oriented solution such as the Mortgage Broker Service
Client example.
Pre-requisites
The Mortgage Broker Service Client sample demonstrates the concepts introduced in the following
sections:

General Concepts

Groups

Conversations

Services

SOAP Services

After going through these sections, you should be able to understand and execute a service-oriented
sample such as the Mortgage Broker Service Client.
Mortgage Broker Service Client Sample
In this sample, a service implements a simplified online mortgage broker application. The borrower
requests a loan through a broker. The broker processes the loan request using one of the third-party
partner services. The borrower can either specify the preferred third-party provider or allow the broker
to default to one. The third-party partner services request credit rating of the borrower from a credit
check service and in turn approves or rejects the loan application based on the credit rating.
The Mortgage Broker Service Client sample project is shipped with the product and can be accessed in
TIBCO Business Studio from Help > BusinessWorks Samples.
Next Steps
After completing this section, you should be able to design service-oriented processes with minimal
assistance.

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Mapping Concepts to a Sample: Managing Books for a

Bookstore
The concepts introduced in sections General Concepts and Additional General Concepts enable you to
understand and design a resource-oriented solution such as the Bookstore example.
Pre-requisites
The Bookstore sample requires the concepts introduced in the following sections:

General Concepts

Additional General Concepts

After going through these sections, you should be able to understand and execute a resource-oriented
solution such as the sample to manage books for a bookstore.
Bookstore Sample
The bookstore sample uses a RESTful service to add, delete, update, retrieve books from bookstore. The
following REST methods are used:

POST - Posts books to the bookstore

GET - Get books from the bookstore

PUT - Updates books to the bookstore

DELETE - Deletes books from the bookstore

The Bookstore sample project is shipped with the product and can be accessed in TIBCO Business
Studio from Help > BusinessWorks Samples.
Next Steps
After completing this section, you should be able to design resource-oriented processes with minimal
assistance.

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29

Design-time Concepts
Design-time concepts introduces TIBCO Business Studio, an Eclipse-based integration development
environment that is used to design and test ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications.
TIBCO Business Studio provides a common modeling, implementation, and deployment environment
for different types of applications. It provides Eclipse extensions such as editors, palettes, and so on.
Business analysts can capture, design and model all aspects of a business process, including the
underlying organization and data models. Solution designers can implement the process as an
executable application, then deploy the application at runtime for execution.
TIBCO Business Studio Development Environment
TIBCO Business Studio provides a workbench that can be used to create, manage, and navigate
resources in your workspace. A workspace is the central location on your machine where all the data
files are stored.
TIBCO Business Studio Workbench

The workbench consists of:

Menu: Contains menu items such as File, Edit, Navigate, Search, Project, Run, Window, and Help.

Toolbar: Contains buttons for the frequently used commands such as New
Disable Business Studio Capabilities

, Save

, Enable/

, Create a new BusinessWorks Application Module

Create a new BusinessWorks Shared Module

, Debug

, Run

, and so on.

Perspectives: Contain an initial set and layout of views that are needed to perform a certain task.
TIBCO Business Studio launches the Modeling perspective by default. You can change the
perspective from the menu Window > Open Perspective > <perspective_name>.

Views: Display resources and allow for navigation in the workbench. For example, the Project
Explorer view displays the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications, modules, and other resources
in your workspace, and the Properties view displays the properties for the selected resource. You
can open a view from the menu Window > Show View > <view_name>.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts

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Editors: Provide a canvas to configure, edit, or browse a resource. Double-click on a resource in a

view to open the appropriate editor for the selected resource. For example, double-click on an
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks process (MortgageAppConsumer.bwp) in the Project Explorer view to
open the process in the editor.

Palettes: Palettes group activities that perform similar tasks and provide quick access to activities
when building a process. See Palettes for details.

Testing and Debugging

TIBCO Business Studio bundles some of the runtime components so that you can run and debug an
application in the design-time environment.
on the tool bar enable you to debug an application.

The menu option Run > Debug or the icon

The menu option Run > Run or the icon

on the tool bar enable you to run an application.

Run configurations specify information such as:

Bundles to be executed.

Arguments such as the target operating system, target architecture, target web services, and so on.

Settings that define the Java Runtime Environment including the Java executable, runtime JRE,
configuration area and so on.

Tracing criteria for the OSGi JAR file, if needed.

Common options such as choosing to save the results either as local files or as shared files, and also
to display them in the menus (Debug and/or Run). It also allows to define encoding for the result
files.

Once created, an application can be run using a specific configuration. If a run configuration is not
specified, the project displayed in the editor area is launched by default.

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Runtime Concepts
Runtime refers to the AppNode and the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine that host and execute
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications.
AppNode
An AppNode (also called bwappnode) is an operating system process (JVM) that hosts and executes
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications. An AppNode consists of two key layers: the OSGI
Framework and ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Engine. The high level architecture of an AppNode is
shown in the following figure:
Application Node Architecture

The framework layer performs application life cycle operations, ensures that dependencies required by
the application are satisfied, and interacts with the Administrator (TIBCO Enterprise Administrator or
bwadmin utility). The engine layer is responsible for the executing the application. The engine is multithreaded and can execute multiple jobs for the same or different applications concurrently.
At runtime, an AppNode launches the framework to validate and identify dependencies. After the
framework validates the modules and the application is deployed, ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine
starts the underlying processes.
The binary file named bwappnode is packaged under the TIBCO_HOME/bw/6.1/bin directory.
Each AppNode is associated with an AppSpace. See Administration Concepts for more information
about AppSpaces.
Process Instance
Execution of any process creates an execution scope for the activities that are a part of the process and
this scope is called a process instance. Each process instance has a unique id which is referred to as
"ProcessInstanceId".
The execution of a process is triggered by various events. For example, events can be generated by a
Timer that is scheduled to fire off at specific time intervals, or by changes that occur in the file system,
or by messages that are sent by a client over a specific protocol(HTTP, JMS, etc), or simply by messages
sent by other processes.
The ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine is a multi-threaded engine capable of triggering the execution
of the same process multiple times, concurrently, once for each event. When the events that trigger the
execution of a process occur concurrently, the engine executes the same process multiple times,
concurrently, once for each event. And for each execution, the engine creates a process instance that
provides an execution scope for the activities that are a part of the process.
Job
Execution of a component process is called a job. Each job has unique id and it is referred to as "JobId".

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When the business logic is spread across multiple processes, multiple process instances are created and
executed in conjunction to a particular event. Even though these are separate process instances they are
all working together and can be executed as part of the same job. A job can spawn multiple process
instances and can provide the execution context for activities that are part of multiple processes. The
engine always executes a job in one engine thread.
All of the process instances that are part of the same job will have the same JobId. A component process
instance and all of its in-line subprocess instances are also considered to be part of the same job. Non inline subprocesses spawn a new engine thread and are executed on a different job.

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Administration Concepts
Applications are deployed into runtime environments and managed using the bwadmin utility. TIBCO
Enterprise Administrator can also be used to manage and monitor applications.
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks provides a flexible framework that allows you to scale your
runtime environment as needed. The runtime also provides an option to execute the ActiveMatrix
BusinessWorks engine so that the risk of a single point of failure when running an application is
reduced. The engine is responsible for executing the applications.
Following are the key administrative components:

An Application Archive is the deployment unit for an application that is generated in TIBCO
Business Studio.

A Domain is a logical group that provides an isolated environment for applications and their
resources to reside.

An AppSpace is a group of one or more AppNodes, which are runtime entities that host
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications. AppSpaces are contained within a domain. One or more
than one application can be deployed to an AppSpace.

An AppNode is a runtime entity that hosts applications. AppNodes are contained in an AppSpace.

The bwagent is a daemon process that runs on every ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks installation.
When multiple installations across machines are configured as a network, the bwagents interact
with each other using a datastore. They also synchronize the data from the datastore with the local
file system.

In the Administration Architecture illustration below, domain M1 spans two machines, Machine A and
Machine B. Domain N1 is on Machine A. Domain M1 contains two AppSpaces; one of the AppSpaces
S2 spans both the machines. The bwagent on Machine A is configured to interact with the bwagent on
Machine B through the datastore.

The bwagent on Machine A is registered with the TIBCO Enterprise Administrator server. If the
registered bwagent becomes unavailable, the connection between the TIBCO Enterprise Administrator
server and the agent network is automatically recovered. The bwagent on Machine B will autoregister
with the server.
If the TIBCO Enterprise Administrator server becomes unavailable, running applications and
AppSpaces are not impacted.
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The runtime entities manifest as a hierarchical folder structure on the local file system. Every action
performed on the runtime entities results in an update to the file system.
When the runtime entities span machines, the bwagent synchronizes the data from the datastore with
the local file system. The AppNodes that host and execute the applications read their configuration and
data only from the local file system, making the file system the source of truth. The bwagents ensure
that all AppNodes of an AppSpace access the exact same applications. Within an AppSpace all
applications executed by all AppNodes are identical. This ensures that in case of a failure in the
communication channel, the runtime is not affected as it refers to the data on the local file system.
ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks does not support executing different versions of applications within the
same AppSpace.
See Administration guide for more information.

Application Archives
An application archive is a deployment unit for an application that is generated in TIBCO Business
Studio. It is the only artifact that is handed from the design phase to the runtime as it contains all the
bundles and metadata that is required to deploy and run the application.
Applications are developed using the features available in TIBCO Business Studio and can range from
simple to very complex. An ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks application consists of an application module
(Application Modules), which in turn consists of one or more processes that define the business logic,
and zero or more shared modules (Shared Modules). ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks applications can also
contain OSGi bundles that do not contain ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks artifacts.
An application archive contains one or more OSGi bundles, one each for all the modules referenced
directly or indirectly by the application. It also contains application metadata which is used during
deployment.
At runtime, application names must be unique within an AppSpace. When you deploy an application,
each application in an AppSpace is identified by its unique name and a major.minor version number.
The version number is important as it provides traceability and helps troubleshoot in case of an error at
runtime. If any further modifications are made to the application, the archive file must be regenerated
with an updated version number and then deployed to the AppSpace. Any modifications to the
application are then installed as hot fixes or service packs. Only a specific version of an application can
be modified by a hotfix or service pack.

Domains
A domain is a logical group that provides an isolated environment for applications and their resources.
Runtime entities such as AppSpaces and AppNodes are contained within a domain.
A domain can span more than one machine and can share a machine with other domains such that one
machine can contain more than one domain. Applications in one domain are separated from
applications in the other domains.
A domain is the first runtime entity you must create; other runtime entities such as AppSpaces and
AppNodes can only exist within a domain. An application archive is first uploaded to a domain. The
application contained in the application archive can then be deployed into one or more AppSpaces for
execution.
The following diagram shows a single domain that spans two machines. The artifacts installed,
configured, or deployed into Domain1 are available on both machines.

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A domain manifests as a folder, domain_name, in the file system and is located in the <TIBCO_HOME>\bw
\domains directory. This folder contains sub-folders appspaces and appnodes to store data about the
AppSpaces and AppNodes contained in the domain. It also stores the application archive files that are
uploaded to the domain under the archives sub-folder.
File System Manifestation of a Domain

AppSpaces
An AppSpace is a collection of one or more AppNodes.
A domain can contain one or more AppSpaces. AppSpaces can span multiple physical machines across
networks. An AppSpace manifests on the physical machine as a predefined folder structure that
contains information about the applications deployed in that domain. One or more than one application
can be deployed to an AppSpace.
Each AppSpace contains one or more execution runtimes called AppNodes which host the applications.
When you deploy an application to an AppSpace, the application is deployed to all AppNodes that are
part of the same AppSpace. An AppSpace is elastic, which allows AppNodes to be added dynamically
to scale the load on an application, thereby providing load-balancing and fault-tolerance for
applications. You can add and remove AppNodes to an AppSpace even after an application has been
deployed.
The following diagram shows AppSpace1 on Machine 1, AppSpace2 on Machine 2, and AppSpace3
spanning Machine 1 and Machine 2:

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An AppSpace manifests as a folder, appspace_name, in the file system and is located in the
<TIBCO_HOME>\bw\domains\domain_name\appspaces directory, where domain_name is the domain it
belongs to. It contains a folder for each AppSpace in the domain, identified by the AppSpace name,
which is unique for each domain.
The appspace_name folder contains two subfolders - apps and shared. The apps folder contains
applications that are deployed in the AppSpace.
File System Manifestation of an AppSpace

AppNodes
An AppNode is a JVM process that hosts applications created in TIBCO Business Studio. An AppNode
can belong to only one AppSpace.
Each application that is deployed into an AppSpace runs on all of its AppNodes. AppNodes allow
vertical and horizontal scaling. When AppNodes are added to an AppSpace, more processing capacity
becomes available for the deployed application to handle a higher load of requests. AppNodes can be
added to an AppSpace even after an application has been deployed, allowing the deployed application
to scale dynamically across all the AppNodes.
The following diagram shows Domain1, with three AppSpaces and four AppNodes. AppSpace1 and
AppSpace2 contain one AppNode each, while AppSpace3 contains two AppNodes. AppSpace3 spans
two machines, with AppNodes on each machine.

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An AppNode manifests as a folder, appnode_name, in the file system and is located in the <TIBCO_HOME>
\bw\domains\domain_name\appnodes directory, where domain_name is the domain it belongs to.
The appnodes folder contains a subfolder for each AppNode in the AppSpace in the domain, identified
by the AppNode name (unique for each AppSpace).
The appnode_name folder contains the executable binaries and corresponding tra files, the AppNode's
configuration file, and the log file.
File System Manifestation of an AppNode

bwagent
A bwagent is a daemon process that is responsible for provisioning AppNodes and applications,
performing administration commands, and synchronizing data from the datastore with the local file
system.
There is one bwagent for each installation. The bwagent enables communication between agents
located on different machines. When multiple bwagents are configured to communicate with each
other using a common datastore, they form a bwagent network.
When multiple bwagents belong to a network and one of the system fails due to some reason, the failed
system can be restored after a restart. The bwagent restores the system by synchronizing data from the
datastore with the local file system.

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There are multiple ways to access the bwagent: bwadmin, the TIBCO Enterprise Administrator Web UI,
or the REST API.

bwadmin: In enterprise mode, bwadmin sends commands to the bwagent. The bwagent dispatches
the command to targeted agent.

TIBCO Enterprise Administrator Web UI: When the TIBCO Enterprise Administrator Web UI is
used to create and manage runtime entities, the bwagent registered with the TEA agent is
dispatching commands.

REST API: View the bwagent REST API in the Swagger UI and test out operations with sample data.

bwagent supports its own sets of commands. Commands are issued from the command line in the
format: bwagent [options] command <arguments>
bwagent commands are listed below:
Command

Description

apiserver

Starts the apiserver that hosts the REST API in the Swagger UI. Open Chrome and
go to the following URL: http://localhost:5555

startagent

Starts the bwagent. This is the same as typing bwagent at the command line.

stop

Stops the bwagent. This is the same as exiting the bwagent with Crtl+D.

The following options can be specified for bwagent:

Option

Description

Example

-config

Applies the configuration in

the specified file to the
server instance.

bwagent -config bwagent.ini

-f <file[,<file>]>

Reads commands from the

specified file or from the
comma-separated list of
files. The specified file can
contain one command or
multiple commands. Exits
after command execution is
completed.

bwagent -f

-l / --login <arg>

Specifies the login ID to use

for the session.

bwagent -l User1

-logconfig <file>

Uses the specified file for

logback configuration.

bwagent -logconfig mylogback.xml

-x,--xtrace

Echoes the command to the

terminal.

Given bwagent -x , the text +startagent is

echoed to the console when the agent starts.

command_file

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Concepts